Net Neutrality....

If you have been browsing internet lately… and are one of those people who like to check out the trending hashtags in various social platform,, you would have by now surely stumbled across the term “NET NEUTRALITY” and #SaveTheInternet.

So what exactly is this net neutrality….

It is mainly a concept which the internet service providers(ISP) uses to give access to you over various internet websites. According to this concept, the ISP should provide access to all content regardless of its source. They are not allowed to control how and where you use your data.  The same bandwidth , hence the same speed is to be provided to all the websites and they can’t charge us extra money to use any particular website.

But off late the ISP have been thinking to revamp this system. They are making this in bid to provide better internet access , by going to control the traffic flow.

Let’s take an example. Suppose there are two website namely X and Y. The ISP  may charge more money from the website companies to provide better bandwidth to them. X is a multi-billion company whereas Y is a start-up website in it’s initial stage, but with  lots of scope. Of course ,X could provide much more money to the ISP in order to make its website works fast… but what about Y? it would run slow!! And this would not only hamper the startups, but also the regular internet consumer , like you and me. Different package could be introduced in the market, which may allow us to use only a certain no. of websites, and demand extra charges if we want to browse other website. Just think what are we going to do on those Saturdays where we spend the whole day simply surfing!!!

Fortunately, the net is still neutral but you can help in keeping  it secure. Please send your mail to this website. It would send a complaint to TRAI(telecom regulatory of India) and help you understanding the concept of net neutrality in better way!!!

Lastly,

Three cheers for net neutrality!!

#SaveTheInternet   

International’s women day:

Here you go ladies… A day dedicated to all of you, a day where you can proudly embrace the womanhood, a day where you can indulge in lots of male bashing, a day when every male member of your family or friends treats you specially, only because your calendar screams 8^th of March , with the huge hue of pink in it!!

Image Source

As I am always interested in knowing the significance of dates and the history behind it, let us know some past development about the women’s day and why it is been celebrated on 8^th march.

During the 1900s, there was actual oppression being carried on the women. In the western countries, even though the ladies where equally participating in the work force and handling the household responsibility, there was a lot of discrimination toward them. No voting rights, less wages and many other issues forced the ladies to demand equal rights for them. So, the Socialist Party of America, decided to observe national women’s day on every last Sunday of February until 1913.  In 1910, Copenhagen hosted the International Conference of Working Women, where Clara Zetkins, a German leader floated the idea of international’s women’s day.

It was celebrated for the first time in countries like Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland on 19^th of March.  But how come 8^th of March came into existence?

While American and western European ladies where raising their voice, the Russian women began a strike called ‘Bread and Peace’ in response to the death of more than 2 millions soldier in the war. The Czar rule of Russia finally budged in to the demands of the women, granting them many rights, including right to vote. This historic day was 8^th of March. In 1913, this date was declared as the official date to celebrate womanhood.

When you read all this, we all will feel that the woman had came a long way to get the due respect which they all deserved. This year , the UN theme for International women’s day is “Empowering Women, Empowering Humanity”.

Sadly, in India, there is still a lot of development to be done. Women need to be educated, female feticide practice has to be eradicated; the mental and physical abuse has to be stopped.

Of course, the ongoing incident of rapes proves that a much lot has to be changed.

But how to change the mindset of people?

My answer is education. Not just the bookish knowledge, we need to educate women as well as men, with the moral teachings…

 And what about educated but misogynist men?  Well , lots of awareness program which may help to tone down the patriarchal rules of the society.

I also want to plead the already empowered women to please step up and help those women who are in urgent need of social upliftment, rather than indulging in silly male bashing and calling themselves “feminist”.

While we talk about the degraded status of women in all over the world, we sometimes neglect the great feat achieved by them in various fields. There are many women who are head of a state, doctor, inventor, athlete and many more. Did you know, In 2012 London Olympics , women competed in all 26 events but men were not allowed to participate in two events , which were synchronized swimming and rhythmic gymnastics. It is this sort of distinction or achievement which will encourage the women to walk equally with men.

For conclusion, a very hearty congratulation to the World no. 3 Women’s Badminton player , Saina Nehwal, for clinching Silver in All England Championship and becoming first Indian women to do so!! I am sure your achievement will surely inspire lots of Indian girls to achieve their dream in sports and breaking a lot of stereotypes.

#MakeItHappen

Finally, three cheers for women!!!      

What’s in a name??

So how important are our names?

Well, we all have different names, the first ones, last ones, middle ones, nick names, alter ego name and many other stupid names which we are christened with, either by our friends, colleagues or  by our enemies.

 Today I want to share my story of having a name which is both, common and also unique!!

My name is Raj Visa.

So let me talk about my first name, i.e “Raj”. Raj in hindi means “rule” or “reign”. This name even finds a space in Oxford dictionary which defines it as the time span of the British rule in India. This was the literature supposed to be known about my name…..

 But if you watch Bollywood movies, you would be sure by now that it is the most common name in India. Thanks to numerous Shahrukh Khan movies and all the other romantic flicks, the name “Raj” has become synonym with a guy who is romantic ( I mean desperately romantic or in deep love). This name has been made so popular in Hindi movies that I have actually seen some guys, who are a wannabe real life Casanova, renaming them as “raj”. It is somehow supposed to make them look “kewl” in front of girls (WTF), but I think it makes them look as desperate as hell!! Also here is my next argument….

According to me,”Raj” is the most uncommon common name. What I mean is that this name is only popular because of movies, but you would rarely come across  a guy whose name is “Raj”. You would find many people having “raj” as prefix or suffix in their first name… names such as “rajkumar” or “yashraj”. But guys with only first name as Raj are a bit rare to be found. Even in the famous sitcom “The big bang theory”, the full name of actor Kunal Nayyar is “Rajesh koothrapalli” which is shortened to “Raj”. But still I have to deal with stupid remarks made by many people, especially the ones quoting Shahrukh Khan from the movie “Rab ne bana di jodi”. Yup! You all got it, the stupid dialogue…”Raj … naam toh suna hi hoga”.!!! And I have to deal with those buffoons (sigh!!!).

Coming to the unique part of my name, that is my surname. It is “Visa”

I have been in centre of many jokes just because of my surname. I agree it’s quite unique but that doesn’t mean people should actually ask me if it is my real surname (true story). My job interview had actually started after discussing my surname for five minutes. One of my high school teacher used to call me passport (HAHA, you were supposed to laugh on that). All this have an advantage also. I don’t have to alter my name while looking for gmail account. It is also easier to find me in Facebook, Instagram and other social networking sites. But my worries don’t end here. I live in the eastern part of India. Here you would come across people from two states whose language doesn’t have ‘V’ alphabet in it. I am talking about the Bengali and Odia people. The alphabet ‘V’ is replaced with ‘B’ in both these language. The plight that I am talking about is hilariously shown in the movie “Kahaani”, in which the lead was named “Vidya” and she goes to the city of Kolkata. Funny as it may sound, her name was always misspelled as ‘Bidya’ by the sweet people of Kolkata. But that was a movie!! I had to face lots of trouble in my past when my name was wrongly misspelled as “bhisa” or “bisa”. Also no one pronounces it correctly. So there you go… I have trouble with my surname also.

I know that I am not the only guy who has faced problem with his name. It is also not that I hate my name. I proudly say that my name has been given by my father!! It is just the fact that I have to face a bit of problem but it all ends in a funny way.

So all of you out there with a unique name or a common name….. If you are ever troubled by it, then just remember Shakespeare who wrote these lines in the famous “Romeo and Juliet”….

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet”, in which means that a name is an artificial and meaningless convention!!!  

Three cheers to those who are named “Raj”

And also to those who have the surname “Visa”!!!  

Delhi election 2015: Analysis of the resounding victory of the Aam Aadmi Party by a common man himself!!

image source

The mandate is out. The sweeping of the seats has been done. Aam Aadmi Party(AAP) or Common man’s party has swept the Delhi assembly election. One of the youngest party to fight election in the world’s largest democracy, AAP achieved a feet which all the exit polls failed to even calculate. AAP success story is nothing less than a fairy tale in the Indian politics history.

A  techie turned civil servant turned social activist turned politician, the new chief minister of Delhi, Arvind Kejriwal ,(IITian,IRS officer ,RTI(right to information) activist, Ramon Magsaysay awarder) has a new feather to add to his elaborated cap. And the cap which ironically, boldly scream “mein hoon aam aadmi” or “I am the common man”.

Winning 67 out of 70 seats of the Delhi assembly is not a joke. To curb the winning streak of the ruling BJP and to stop the chariot of the prime minister of India is definitely a huge feat. But what magic does Kejriwal’s broom (his party’s symbol) did which other party failed to do so?

Well, most people are still impressed with the work he did briefly for the time when he formed a minority government back in December 2013. Though it lasted 49 days only, its work still resonated with the people. The grass root plan was laid out properly. A promising agenda and manifesto was explained to people. And these simple things seems to have worked way better than the high profile campaigning and political mud throwing.

I really want to applaud for the maturity shown by the Delhi’s voters. Let us go back to May 2014 and look at the result of Indian general election. Delhi consists of 7 parliament seats. Even though AAP did impressive work in those 49 days, they failed to secure a single seat in those election. All the seven seat were won by BJP. They knew that should vote for a party which can provide us good governance and can form stable government. During general election, BJP was the obvious candidate to form a stable government. And during the state election, they thought that AAP could provide better governance in the state and they provided them the majority.

But what about BJP??  They were flying high in every state election past the general election of 2014 when they returned to power after a decade. Interestingly BJP’s vote share still remains the same. It has seen only 1.5% dip in its vote share, but still it went down from 31 seats in last election to 3 seats in this election.  The wonder happened because Congress vote share reducing drastically. While BJP vote share was 33% in last election, this year it had 32% of vote share and the rest of the vote were swallowed by AAP, which throttled them from 29% vote share in 2013 to a whopping 55% in 2015, i.e 29 seats to 67 seats .Somehow or the other , many section are yet to digest the BJP’s agenda and it is their work now to also include those people who are generally shying away from their party.

I really wanted BJP to come to power in Delhi. Not because I am a loyal BJP supporter( which btw I am)But because of the fact that Delhi is a special state where some power is vested by the central government and the other are vested by the state government. So it would have been better if both the state and central government parties would have been the same. How can we forget the famous Dharna(protest) by the then Chief minister Arvind Kejriwal because of his dissatisfaction  with the Delhi Police. This led to a stand-off between the center and the state government. Hope such situations don’t arise this time.

I heartily congratulate AAP and really wish Mr. Kejriwal stands to his promises . And for BJP… they should stop relying on the campaigning done by star politician ( Read : Mr. Modi) and should start preparing from the grass root level to explain people about its development agenda. Also , indulge every class, creed, caste  of people to your party, and stop relying upon the traditional vote of the urban middle class.

Few words for the oldest Indian political party , the Indian National Congress, which failed  to bag even a single seat in this election !!  please rethink about your leadership.

When I first started this blog, many of my friends advised me not to write about politics. But I just did. Because after all we live in a democracy and everyone has right to do anything under correct decorum. Thus I want to say that all the above views are my personal thought and not intended to offend anyone.

Statistics sourced from The Times of India.

Finally three cheers for the Democracy.

Hostels and it’s fun!

Few days ago I was chatting with my friend about my first hostel experience…. of how weird it was , of how the food sucked  and of how it gave us the ultimate fun as we all live away from the family, experiencing freedom as well as responsibility for the first time. For most of the students, their first experience of staying away from the family begins when they join college in different part of their country. I have been living in hostel from my higher secondary and from then my amazing life has began.

Living in hostel is fun, but I have seen many guys getting homesick and returning back to home. I remember my first day at the hostel. I have seen mothers crying when their children pack their bags. But it wasn’t the case with me. My parents didn’t create a scene (thankfully). Neither did I cried or felt homesick. Of course I miss home and the home cooked food or as we say Maa ke haath ka khana  but staying alone has obviously made me more self reliable and independent.

When I went to college, I choose not to stay in the college hostel. I decide to give it a try to private hostels. Unfortunately that wasn’t a pleasant experience. My hostel or as we say mess was owned by group of men who remained drunk whenever I saw them. Still as I was staying with my friends and the fact that there was no entry time limit ( well it was because the landlords were awake whole night drinking), so it was fun initially… but the reality set in soon. My first year classes were held early in the morning. So early that I had to leave my mess by 6.30 am in the morning to catch my college bus. The building entrance was a sort of indoor garage and the main gate was a huge steel gate. It was quite tall and you couldn’t even jump off the gate. The key of the main gate remained with the landlords. So every morning I have to go and wake up a bunch of stinky, drunk sleeping men, who used to hurl abuses at me as I was waking them up from their precious slumber. This continued from some days till one day I saw another guy of my mess jumping off the gate. As I said earlier the gate was too high…so that day I learned the technique to climb that gate by noticing the guy’s technique ( like at which corner we have to place our foot to climb etc). And there I was, jumping a 12 to 15 feet gate every morning…. I still think how I was able to do that…. So all set, no more dealing with those drunken idiots? Umm no!!

 Apparently they used to call all the messmates and gather them at  the terrace during night and under the influence of alcohol  made fake allegations such as ” I heard someone calling me a  motherf@#$er” or “I saw someone puncturing my bike”. I have to tell that those guys were quite huge and scary  too. I remember one of them was more than 6 foot tall and had shaved head and eyebrows too (much like Sanjay Dutt’s kancha cheena in the Movie “Agneepath”,,, really creepy). So I and my friends decided we have had enough. We decided to leave the mess. But as per the rule we have to pay two month’s rent in advance if we have to leave. Of course it was a verbal agreement and nothing was made legal in paper before we joined. And we knew that if we go and talk about leaving room to those goons, they would have created a problem. So when it was Durga Pooja vacation (eastern Indian school and colleges remains close for two week during this festival), we packed our stuff and said that we are leaving for home, but instead switched to a better place. After the vacations we informed them by the phone that we have left the place. They shouted on us but then asked us to come and give us the room key at least, to which we replied that you are free to break the lock!!! Thus the nightmare finally ended!! Phew!!

I know what we did wasn’t right, but hey sometimes you have to take the crooked way. So this is what I wanted to say about the hostel life. I would have never imagined myself getting out of the trouble like that, but I did. So in difficult times , these are the precious reminders which help us to overcome any difficulty.

 By the end of this year, I would be joining my first job. I know even there I have to find a bachelor’s pad but one thing which I can tell for sure is that it would not  be as fun as the college time…

P.S ,  I am bunking my class and writing this piece now!!!                                        

Of the selfies and narcissism

The world of smart phones is equipped with one common trend and that is obviously taking selfies i.e  the art of clicking one’s own pic with help of their phone.  If it’s a group pic then it’s called  ussies or groupies and so on…

While taking selfie is still a big trend, the latest toy regarding this new hobbie of people is the selfie stick, a sort of stand ,to hold up your cell phone while you take that perfect snap either pouting or rolling  out your tongue. It all seemed a fun thing to me until I read an opinion about the selfie stick that said…

“ selfie stick!! It’s more of a narcissi-stick”   

Then it hit on me… is this trend really making us a narcissist?

Narcissism could be described as the excessive fondness for oneself and being way too much loving about themselves. It is derived from the name of Narcissus , who appears in Greek mythology. He used to be a really attractive person and one day he fell in love with his own reflection in a pond. When he realized that he couldn’t be with his own reflection, he choose to drown himself and then turn into a flower, which thus gives name to the flower narcissus.

 All the selfies which we found on internet are of best features of that person. We get party selfies, gym selfies, outing selfies etc ,all the scenario in which the person is either dressed beautifully or have a ripped body or doing some extravagant things. So is this really a way to feel good about you? Yes and No.

According to me it is good to feel positive about yourself and thus staying in a better shape or dressing up well , are  one of the various ways. But the other time I feel, people simply try to copy others in the social media and thus end up doing things which turns out to be a complete disaster for them…

Some studies tell that we human perceive ourselves 10 times more attractive than our actual self. Which is isn’t that bad… but don’t you think this selfie culture is giving  more fuel  to this finding and making us all self obsessed with ourselves?

Well even if it does… is it narcissism?

No, it isn’t. Narcissistic personality disorder(NPD) is a disorder which affects 1% of the total global population. It is severe case of self pleasing one by indulging in self flattery, believing that one can perform every task in the world and above all they are in delusion of many things.

It is really harmful in many cases…

So next time you see a person clicking a selfie, don’t call him a narcissist  , instead call him self- loving. Go , grab your smart phone a click a selfie now!!!  

The last stop!

In my previous post , I described about the two destination I visited while I was in Mumbai. Apart from attending infinite family gathering( weddings, house warming ceremony, etc), I didn’t go much around in Mumbai. Instead I went to a pilgrimage…. Yea… right!

So I am not a religious person but I couldn’t say no to that trip. Apparently the whole family had gathered after such a long time, so it was quite exciting to be a part of such a trip where more than fifteen people travel together.. chaos certified J. And it’s also isn’t bad to take god’s name some time.

We were going to Nathdwara, a town in the western Indian state of Rajasthan. It is home of the famous Shrinathji temple. Nathdwara literally translate to “gateway to god”. We all boarded a train to Mavli, another sleepy town in Rajasthan, so as to reach our destination. One thing you have to agree, about travelling in a train in India, is the beautiful  view.!!

We reached Mavli early in the morning and it was freezing there.

 From there we had a 20 minute jeep ride and finally we arrived at our destination. All the exhaustion due to travel was vanished at once after having a look at this royal hotel we were staying in. The room had got a beautiful view of the town.

Before visiting the temple, we decided to go to a nearby town called Kankroli. It has a famous manmade lake called Rajsamand Lake.And it was  breathtaking….

 After visiting some relatives in Kankroli( my relatives exist in almost every western Indian city) we returned to Nathdwara.

It’s quite an old town. It was all evident because of the narrow street.

 Before the path to the temple began… I found this gate… apparently used in earlier days keep wild elephants away.

I don’t have any pics of the Temple as electronic gadgets were not allowed inside the temple premises( as is case with many Indian temple). This was followed by souvenir shopping and tasting local cuisine… yummy!!

The next day we went to Gandhinagar, capital of the Indian state of Gujarat , to visit my aunt( I told you so….). After spending quality time with them, we boarded our train back to Mumbai from Ahmedabad, the largest city of Gujarat and the fifth largest city of India. No prizes on guessing that we did visited our relatives staying in Ahmedabad before boarding the train : /

My visit to Mumbai ended after attending one more wedding (yeah! Truly).. And finally the day came when we boarded the flight back to Bhubaneswar.

So after giving you a long detail about my travel destination… what am I offering you? Well it’s just a fact that i want to convey, that you don’t have to plan a particular day to go visiting any place. Even if you go to a new place for work,,, have some time for yourself and try to soak in the place’s beauty and grace. We may think of travelling to places far away, in a different country … which is good no doubt… but do remember that there could be a beautiful, sleepy town nearby, whose history, whose soul can be as amazing as those exotic foreign location.

And it’s always nice to meet your family member after a long gap!!!

All the pics imported from my bro’s Instagram account.